


and all matter of things

by pigeonfancier



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), POV Original Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-19 16:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4752797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonfancier/pseuds/pigeonfancier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I won't go back," the boy was saying, and the way he spoke was all wrong. His words were harsher where they needed to be soft, rasping like each syllable was having to claw its way up out of his throat. Fear was slurring it, and the result was garbled, barely recognisable as Cyrodilic. "I won't!"</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>"You will!" The captain's name came to her suddenly, his voice clicking in a way that his face had not. Gjalund. He was one of Idesa's men, then: she had brought him once to the cornerclub on a lark, where he'd sat in the corner, red-faced and uncomfortable while she had showed him off. He had not sounded so harsh then. "Do you think I want to deal with your parents?" he snarled, his face inches from the boys. "The things they will say! Bad enough my prices, but now - now the wretched n'wah is stealing their damn children as well?"</i></p><p>[An OC-centric story about the Gray Quarter, dunmer and culture wars. Follows the plot of the game, but does not feature the Dragonborn.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. DINYA

**Author's Note:**

> Skyrim is my first Elder Scrolls game, and I'm currently still making my way through, so please feel free to let me know if I'm stomping on any lore! I've been reading the wiki to fact-check as I go, but I could always have missed something.
> 
> Current plans for this fic is ten chapters, and it will feature most of the Windhelm NPCs, but we'll see where it goes!

The scream ripped through the early morning silence like a knife, and high up on the rooftops of Windhelm, Dinya startled, her grip sliding on the tile. It was a rookies mistake, the sort she hadn't made in years: step carefully, and the shale rooftops were easy to navigate even in the dead of winter. Windhelm's houses were older, older even than the bones in the cornerclub's shrine, and no amount of snow or sleet could fill the holes and crags that made the rooftops so easy to climb. The roofs were a treasure trove of footholds and places to grip.

But once you slipped, recovering that grip was nearly impossible.

Her palm skidded no the tile. A moment later, her belly struck the roof with a force that left her gasping for air. There were spots dancing in the corners of her eyes as she wheezed for breath, but she still had the presence of mind to scramble for a new hold on the tile.

She didn't want to hit the ground from this height. Dinya had been forced to practice falling and tumbling for long months before Ambarys would even let her near the rooftops, and Windhelm was an easy city, with all the buildings packed together like stones in a riverbed. The little slits of alleyway between buildings were nothing compared to the half-metre gaps in Riften. If she fell here, it wouldn't kill her.

All the same, she didn't want to fall. She was much higher than even the walls now, and she'd seen the shattered, twisted mess a fall from those could create of a man's legs.

She didn't want to fall, but momentum was getting the best of her. Her blood-slick hands were slipping off of the tiles each time she managed to grasp one, and the more speed she gained, the quicker they flashed by. She slid five feet, nearly ten, the world reduced to a blur of colour around her. Her eyes were burning, she couldn't twist to see where she was sliding. All she could do was angle her body towards where she thought the aclove was, loosen it up - and with that thought, she gave up all at once at trying to grasp the tiles.

If she was going to hit the ground, her only hope was to strike it while she was limp.

A moment later, she struck something solid instead. The interior of the gutter was brittle, filled with leaves and detritus, but thank the Nine, this was one of the older houses. It was sturdy, with a water drain built out of stone and mortar, and although it shook under her weight, it didn't give.

When the desperate drum of her pulse in her ears faded, she almost thought the screaming had faded. But no, it was still there: just faded, reedy, hitching like the person was finally, finally running out of breath.

Her hands were burning as she curled them shut, pressing hard against the cuts. When she opened them, the skin was furled, red and oozing where the tiles had sliced in. She wiped them off on the edge of her trousers with a grimace, cringing as the rough fabric caught on the wounds. But already the warming potion she had taken earlier was kicking into effect. Rivulets of smoke were coiling off of her skin as it began to pick up heat, melting off the residue of the ice and snow, and the blood - still blossoming along the jagged edges of the tears - was beginning to solidify and flake even as she watched.

Everything hurt: her belly, her feet, her poor, wretched hands. But the bag was still safely strapped to her back, and the way the sharp edges were digging into her spine felt like a relief. And she hadn't fallen.

She had slipped, but she was fine now. (She hoped she was fine. Her feet were a mass of callouses, the sensation long worn out of them from years of exposure: if the roof had left them nearly as much of a mess as her hands, then she wouldn't find out until she reached her home.) But that didn't matter, she reminded herself. What mattered is that if she went to the market now, she'd be able to catch Niranye before the altmer had time to scamper, exchange the packages, and be back at the corner club to eat her midmorn meal with Mesmer.

But that was only if she ignored the scream.

The sound had finally stopped. This close to the Gray Quarter, few curtains moved. No one wanted to know what was happening, and slowly, the usual night-time sounds resumed. She could hear a cricket somewhere nearby, the low buzz of its song almost unnatural in the quiet.

Women had been turning up dead all throughout Windhelm, but no one cared. Ambarys had told her it was for the best just to ignore it. "They're Nords," he'd explained as she helped him unpack one of his shipments. "They're not after us grayskins, so what's it matter?" And although that'd been the end of the conversation, Dinya hadn't been able to put away the concern as easily as he had. She'd never seen one of the dead women, but she'd heard the stories, the same as everyone else.

Even if they were just Nords, no one deserved to have their bones left out for the birds to consume.

It would be easy to just continue on her route to the market, make it there and back to her home before the streets became thick with people. But the swell of warmth that crept up her throat had nothing to do with the potion. It was none of her business, and yet the thought still hung in her head, refusing to be pushed to the back. If it was another woman being murdered...

If it was another women being murdered, and she did nothing..

No, she couldn't just walk away, Nord or no. Niranye would just have to wait.

Dinya blew out her cheeks, and began the long descent off of the roof.

The sun was still well below the horizon by the time she reached the ground. The streets of Windhelm were mostly abandoned, and the only creature awake to see her drop to the ground was a cat in the alley.

Still, she kept her pace brisk all the same. When she rounded the corner and onto the well-lit path, the guards were still at their posts, lingering lazily on the street corners and watching from underneath the dim shadows of the shop overhangs. The fact most of them had faces chapped red by the wind and a long night spent outdoors didn't stop them from staring as she walked by, and she found herself hunching her shoulders, drawing in on herself.

It was a struggle to keep her gray palms empty and visible in front of her. (Not in her pockets: never in her pockets, where they could use it as an excuse to stop her.) Tired though they might be, the guards also looked bored - and a Windhelm guard could always find a reason to stop a dunmer outside of the Gray Quarter, if they fancied it.

That was why she usually stuck to the night and the roofs, far from the lantern's glow and any guards looking for a night's entertainment. No matter how much her body might scream at her afterwards, it was better than the way her skin was crawling now.

None of the guards stirred as she slipped into one of the alleys, and out of the torches light. The scream might have stopped, but her ears still rang with the sound, and recalling the direction was easy enough. It had come from past the quarter, not in it: the sound had been farther south than that.

(Thank the Nine. If the killer had moved from Nords to the rest of Windhelm's populace, then Ambarys would never let her out past dusk again.)

It had come from the docks, she decided, and that was why the guards were still lazing. It was probably just a thief, caught trying to get into one of the trading company's offices, but...

She kept walking.

The quarter was lifeless as she cut her way through, the doors all firmly shut, the windows barred and the curtains drawn tight. A few hours ago, many of her neighbors would have just been heading to bed, but this close to dawn, even the air was still.

The cornerclub wasn't open yet, but she knew if she knocked, Ambarys would open the door. He never slept for long: by this point of the night, he'd likely have been up for hours already, polishing the dishes or preparing the first meal of the day. But although she had picked up his package, she didn't dare to show her face until she had returned with Niranye's.

It wasn't as if he would yell at her. Ambarys was always so pleased when she succeeded, but he was rarely disappointed when she failed. She was young. He never expected any better, but that was all the more reason not to return until it was done.

So she wound past her home and continued walking. The guard at the gate didn't so much as glance her way as she slipped past him, and down the stairway to the docks.

No matter the time of night, the docks were never silent. But she supposed even the scaleskins needed to sleep occasionally, and right now, only a few stragglers were out, their breathes casting steamy clouds into the air as they worked. In the dim light, it would have been easy enough to mistake them as men: with their heads down and their tails curled underneath them, away from the heavy feet and heavier barrels, the only hint of their nature was when the light spackled on their muzzles and caught on the red of their eyes. She'd thought she'd grown used to the sight.

One glanced over at her, the frills of its crest raising in a silent question, and her skin crawled. "Evening, eggbrother," she murmured, her voice carrying in the silence, and it stared at her - then it turned away.

The noise had started up again, a reedy, wet rasp. If one of the scaleskins had turned towards it, even seemed curious, then she might've been able to turn back to the city.

But they paid it no more mind then they paid her, and so she hurried along the docks, her hands reaching for a dagger she had left at home.

The reedy whine was coming from one of the docked boats. There was a sour taste building in her mouth, a churning in her gut as she approached the source of the sound, for there was no insignia on the side of the old wooden schooner. Not a company ship, then, or one of the Stormcloak's trading barges: it was an independent ship, belonging to one of the sailors rejected from a company proper. She had never liked those. There was something untrustworthy about men who refused to work with others.

And there was no doubt that this was a man's boat, for although it lacked a symbol, it was a Windhelm schooner through and through, the sides dry but built with the same gray-green wood as the docks beneath her.

The gangplank was still down, and the noise was drifting towards her. Likely a stow-away, she reasoned. It was none of her business. The dead women were left in courtyards, on the stairs, in the streets: places where they were guaranteed to be found, their bodies in pieces, the skin flayed and the bones stripped, so they sat like meat in the market. Who would ever find a body on some anonymous boat?

It was just a stowaway. She needed to walk away, before she wasted the entire morning trying to play a hero.

The person's breath hitched, broke.

The gang plank was still down. She slunk aboard, unwilling.

The deck of the boat was crowded with people - men - who paid her no mind as she slipped aboard. Their attention was all on the man in the center of the deck, and the boy he was holding up by an arm.

The moons light shone down on the captain, dappled across the planes of his face. He was one of the Nords that Idesa was always going on about: broad-shouldered, big-boned, pale-haired. His features were thick and heavy, and right now, they were twisted with rage.

She did not recognise the boy he was holding, and that was strange, because he was Dunmer.

There weren't many adolescents in the Grey Quarter, and Dinya was the youngest of them all. She knew all of her peers by face and name and where they slept at night, even if she rarely dealt with them directly. This boy was foreign, with high, fine features, red eyes that were slit tight with pain, and skin so dark that it brought the Redguards to mind.

But right now, the boy's face was flushed white as the waves churning below him. And he was still a boy, young enough that his eyeridges were mere juts on his forehead, not even grown in enough to count as true brows.

From this distance, Dinya could see his lips moving, but she couldn't quite hear the words he was saying over the commotion around him. The air was thick with the rush of the sailor's voices, some quiet, others not, but all underlaid with the same tension.

In approval? Disapproval? She couldn't tell, but no one was moving to stop him, and so she crept forward all the same, slinking up to the very edge of the crowd.

No one looked back, even though she was near enough now to hear the boy's words. Why would they, when their captain was putting on such a show in front of them?

"I won't go back," the boy was saying, and the way he spoke was all wrong. His words were harsher where they needed to be soft, rasping like each syllable was having to claw its way up out of his throat. Fear was slurring it, and the result was garbled, barely recognisable as Cyrodilic. "I won't!"

"You will!" The captain's name came to her suddenly, his voice clicking in a way that his face had not. Gjalund. He was one of Idesa's men, then: she had brought him once to the cornerclub on a lark, where he'd sat in the corner, red-faced and uncomfortable while she had showed him off. He had not sounded so harsh then. "Do you think I want to deal with your parents?" he snarled, his face inches from the boys. "The things they will say! Bad enough my prices, but now - now the wretched n'wah is stealing their damn children as well?"

"They won't!"

Creeping aboard the ship unnoticed had been an easy enough affair. But now the boy was scanning the crowd, frantic, his eyes bright with fear as they slipped from one face to another. Whatever he was searching for - sympathy, pity, someone who might intervene - he wasn't finding, and his words were getting faster and faster, tumbling from his mouth in a senseless protest he seemed unable to stop.

Or control. The consonants were rasping, his accent thickening as he pleaded, but the fear in his voice would've been recognisable in any language. "They won't! They won't, I promise, I'll tell them, I _promise_ \- just don't send me back! Please!"

She couldn't peel her eyes off of the scene: the light was shining down on the duo like Azura herself was watching, casting their features in soft shadows. But she crept backwards app the same, making her way slowly back towards the gangplank. She only managed to rip her eyes away when something squelched under her feet, the sound barely audible through the din.

There was blood where she had walked before, glistening in the moon's light, and the sight - the proof that she had been here - made her ill. She had lingered here for too long already. This was not some girl that needed saving: this was some runaway from Morrowind or farther, a thief that had stolen voyage and was set to pay the price. It was none of her concern.

(The way her stomach clenched at the thought was irrelevant.)

But she wasn't quite at the gangplank when the boy's eyes finally fell on her, separated from the crowd. "Sedura! Sera, ah, a'val sera --" he cried, and then everyone was turning at once to stare at her: what felt like a hundred jewel-bright eyes, pale and accusing. Behind her, there was the sound of movement, and when she looked back, one of the sailors was blocking the gangplank, some tall, broad Breton with hands like a club and a slit-thin mouth.

When she met his eyes, he did not smile.

There was an ache in her stomach, like the whole thing was twisting in on itself, and she was painfully aware of the package sitting tucked away into the back on her back. What would happen if they called the guards on her, claimed her as another stow-away?

What would happen if they didn't?

The water wasn't so far, she thought, flitting her eyes towards the edge. The warming potion was already wearing off, and she could feel the chill in her toes. Right now, it was only as unpleasant as touching her fingers to a fish, but already it was getting colder. Diving into the ocean would be foolish.

Staying here felt like it would be worse.

In his excitement, the boy had lapsed into Dunmeris, a rapid-fire garble of clicks and a rattle of consonants that she couldn't hope to follow. But now it was all that thick, heavy-tongued Cyrodilic again: "See, sera, you can leave me here! I'll be fine! My parents will understand!"

"She's my --" Dinya had been slinking towards the edge of the ship, but when she finally reached the lip of the rail, the breton gestured for her to turn, his thin lips curling up into a crooked smile. Reluctantly, she did, although she kept one eye on him. Travelling with a knife through the city was a fool's game, but oh, she missed the weight of a dagger in her hipsheath right now.

The boy's eyebrows were knit, his eyes worried, his mouth twisting like the word was at the tip of his tongue. "Cousin!" he cried at last, triumphant: "- she's my cousin, she came to get me, it's fine!"

There was a pause. The crowd of sailors had parted around her, so that there was only scarce metres between her, Gjarlund and the boy. Gjarlund looked at her now, thin-lipped, his eyes narrowed as if he was assessing her.

And then the big nord snarled, hauling the boy up in the air by the arm. All at once, everyone was shouting: the sailors, some with amusement and others with alarm, the boy, and even her own voice was in the din before she realised, a wordless hiss of protest. But above all of it was the snarl of Gjarlund's voice, as he seemed to swell with rage. "Enough of this foolishness!" he snarled. "I'll throw you in the brig and send you home in a barrel! I won't deal with this s'wit over you, boy!"

"No, no, stop," Dinya cried, and her voice cut through the cacophony like a knife. "Put him down! It's true!"

Dinya had never considered herself a small woman. In the Gray Quarter, she was a giant compared to most of her peers. Even in the rest of the city, she stood a head above the crowd, tall enough to look a man in the eye. But if she was large, then Gjarlund was huge, and in the throes of his anger, he loomed.

All the same, she forced her shoulders back, her spine straight, and she stepped forward.

Each quiet tap of her feet against the deck felt like a death sentence. When she came near enough to be heard, she still had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.

Gjarlund stared at her for a moment, his brow furrowed. There was a confused sort of recognition in his eyes as he traced her features, her hair - and then recognition hit, all at once, and his face cleared like clouds off of the moons. "By the Nine," he snapped, his scowl deepening. "You're Idesa's little cousin, aren't you?"

Little was not a word anyone had used for her in years. She faltered, but the boy was staring at her, pleading. ".. yes," she said, slow, and if she had expected the admission to soothe Gjarlund's temper, she was wrong. He gave the boy another shake, and although he'd gone limp in Gjarlund's grasp, she could still hear the low whine of pain.

For a moment, she thought that he was going to fling him over the edge of the boat. He was tensed as if he might, the muscles in his neck strained, his already thin lips pressed to a line. "Fine, then," he said instead, each word low. "Tell her she owes me for not dragging this runt back by his ears."

When had she started holding her breath?

"I'll head back to Solstheim and tell them that Idesa's taken on the child. You lot can sort out the rest yourselves."

Gjarlund loosened his grip all at once, releasing the boy's arm, and he hit the deck with a thump that made her cringe: feet first, with an audible pop as his knees absorbed the impact. But he staggered to his feet a moment later, wiping off his clothes, and if he was stumbling, at least he was still moving.

Not quickly enough. Gjarlund shoved him the final step, hard enough that he staggered, and Dinya had to catch him to stop him from falling again. "Let Idesa know we'll be having words about this," Gjarlund snapped, and then he turned away, dismissing them.

All around them, the crowd of sailors was churning. Some were heading back to whatever tasks they had been up to prior to this interruption, but Dinya could feel the eyes of others on her back as she and the boy fled back to the docks. The boy was scrubbing at his arm, his face still pale, but when he faltered, Dinya simply hooked her arm through his good one and pulled him along with her, ignoring the muffled whine of his breath behind her. Nords were a capricious lot, and although Gjarlund had dismissed them, Dinya had no intentions of staying long enough for him to change his mind.

Her nerves were screaming for her to break into a run. She kept her pace steady instead. Even though the sky was reddening above them as the sun approached the horizon, the only people on the docks were the scaled folk. While they had been on board, the crowd of dock workers had thickened, and now the air was thick with the sound of hissing voices as they began what would be another long day of work. In this increased light, there was no mistaking them for anything but lizardmen now.

Only two decades ago, Dinya would have been forbidden to set foot onto the docks by herself. But scaleskin clutches hatched quickly, much faster than any mer or man could hope to follow, and Ambarys had worked hard to win over these last few generations. There were a few curious stares, especially at the way the boy was pressing in close to her, but no one stopped them as she headed up the stairs.

"Thank you," he rasped from behind her.

The boy was clutching his arm as he walked, rubbing it as if he was trying to soothe the ache. (Or rub warmth into it. She could scarcely see his face behind the fog of his breath.) Where his bare skin was exposed, she could still see the indentations left by Gjarlund's grip, pale white lines in the plump swell of his skin. "I thought he was going to kill me." His voice was raw, but the accent was still there, garbling the words into something sharp and foreign. "He's always been kind to me in the past -"

"You've never stolen passage before." He was lagging behind her, favoring a knee, and she tugged open the gate for him. He only hesitated for a moment before he stepped inside the walls of Windhelm.

"I didn't steal anything," he said, hushed. "I didn't drink their water, and I didn't eat their food. It's only two day's sailing. It isn't as if I could weigh them down." He sighed, a great exhale of air, and his shoulders slumped. "They only caught me when I was leaving. I don't see - it shouldn't have mattered."

It was striking Dinya that she had no idea what to do with this boy, no plan now that he was off the boat and away from Gjarlund. He was tailing her as she walked, and even though her pace was brisk, fast enough that the guards wouldn't bother to stop her, he was doing his best to keep up. He showed no signs of turning away, and although he kept peering up at the shop signs as they passed, his face showed no recognition: nothing but stress and a mild sort of curiousity.

She could just ask where he was meant to go, but what would she do if he said he had nowhere? It was an unpleasant thought, so she let the silence hang instead. If he wanted to stay as her shadow...

Unfortunately, he was a meddlesome shadow. As they bypassed the Grey Quarter and headed towards the market proper, he kept drawing the eye of the guards and the few men out alike. The boy wasn't dressed like a Nord, like a proper resident of the city: he wasn't even dressed like a dunmer. His clothes were canvas, sure enough, but all reds and golds that seemed to catch and hold the early morning light until they shone with it. No Nord would venture outside wearing something like that.

No one with half a lick of sense would. People were staring at him, but worse yet, she could already feel their gazes settling on her in turn. Her, and the package nestled into the small of her back.

And not helping matters was the fact the boy was still chattering away behind her.

"- but that's enough of that," he said, forlorn. "I suppose it doesn't matter." At her look, he pushed back his hair with a nervous laugh, the stream of his words slowing to something steadier. She had not been paying attention to his chatter, lost in her own thoughts, but had he been slipping into Dunmeris? His accent had certainly thickened again.

"I'm sorry. Everyone says I talk too much! It's a dreadful habit, I know... but, ah, what's your name? I'm -"

He paused, his brow wrinkling. The silence hung a moment too long to be natural, and then he said, bright: "Ah. I'm Kren. From Solstheim."

"You don't even know your own cousin's name?" she asked, sour. "My! What good kin we make. My name's Dinya, boy. Dinya Giryon."

"Dinya," he repeated, hesitant. "What an.. interesting name. Do your parents call you that?"

Perhaps he noticed her black look, for he hastened to add: "It's a perfectly nice name! It suits you well!"

Kren from Solstheim was the worst liar she had ever met.

"Stop talking," she told him, picking up her pace, and the way he squeaked with distress was a poor revenge. The worst part was that she couldn't even feign anger over it: barbed comments like that had long ceased to bother her. Calling her Dinya as a child had been laziness and an endearment on Ambarys's part all at once, but the name hadn't suited her even then, back when she was long-faced and thin, but still small enough.

After that first growthspurt had left her gangly and hulking and with a jaw as sharp as one of Malthyr's knives, it had turned from an oddity into an insult.

But Kren was lucky. Her hands stung, she could feel the burn of the cold more sharply with each passing moment, and she hadn't the energy to waste on offense, not when she had never expected gratitude.

He was still following her, but that was alright. She'd take him back to Ambarys, she decided. Foist this child and Niranye's package off of on her foster-father, and bury her agitation under an entire day's worth of food.

"And try to keep up," she added, late. He was lagging behind her as they headed into the market, and that was no good. She hadn't rescued him from the sailor - because she had, hadn't she - just to have him killed by some cutpurse.

the sun was just beginning to crest the horizon when they made it to the marketplace. All around them, the city was beginning to stir to life as the first of the residents began their days work, and many of the vendors were already setting up their stalls for the day. Some of them had already begun selling: she could see Hillevi off in the corner, half-dozing against the support strut of her stand, and Quintus was already talking to a customer, the coloured glass of his potions glittering in the light.

In front of his stand was his box of warming potions, in a crate large enough it must've once stored wine. She eyed them longingly, but - no. She would be home soon enough. There was no point in wasting her septims on something so frivolous, no matter how her feet were beginning to sting.

The boy - Kren - was still lagging behind her. When she looked back, it was to find him gawking around, his eyes wide as a child's. "There's so many Nords here," he said, and at her stare, he flushed, the tips of his ears going ruddy. "Oh, I know, this is Nord country. But I.. ah... well, they're not like I imagined."

He glanced towards the nearest stall, where the blacksmith's apprentice was hanging up her wares. "They're so tall," he said, hushed.

Dinya blinked, glancing around. The crowd was mostly women still, none of whom struck her as especially large. "Surely they have Nords on Solstheim."

"Well, yes," he admitted. "But not like these! The Skaal are all normal-sized, and these fellows.." He shrugged, glancing up at her with a weak smile. "Well, it's not exactly the same. And they're all so pink here."

Quintus was not what Dinya would consider pink, but she supposed the Nords on Solstheim might be of a different stock. Or perhaps Kren was simply talking. Of the two, the former seemed the most likely: the boy just seemed to like the sound of his own voice, no matter how inane his prattle seemed. "Well, stop gawking before you get the both of us arrested."

The look Kren shot her was dubious, but he fell silent all the same.

It was early enough in the morning that Aval wasn't in the market yet. They were the only dunmer in the market, and it seemed like her comment had made Kren realise that, for he was back to sticking close to her as a burr. That, or perhaps he'd simply realised people were staring right back at him.

They might've been the only dunmer in the market, but at least they weren't the only mer. Niranye's stall was towards the back of the market's plaza, tucked between a beam and the higher inner wall. It wasn't so much hidden away as it was easily missed: even after it was pointed out, with its drab, frayed gray overhang and the lazy sign above it, it seemed to fade into the backdrop. It was not the sort of stall that a person remembered.

(She had mentioned that once to Ambarys, puzzling over it, and he'd laughed in her face. "Yes, child," he'd said, fond in the way he'd get whenever she said something foolish: "That's rather the point.")

"Niranye," she called now. The stall was flush with the wall, and only now, with the overhang shielding her eyes from the light, could she see the door hidden behind it. Kren had noticed it as well.

"Is that her home?"

"Because," he continued, "I didn't know you could live in walls. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of them? If there's rooms inside, someone could just burst right in. Or ashn spawn could creep in through the cracks, straight into your bed while you're sleeping..."

"I don't live there," a voice said from behind them. Niranye sounded amused. She always did."But my, what a lovely thought."

"Ambarys didn't say he'd be sending you and your brother, Dinya." The altmer slipped past her, ducking her head as she went under the opening to the booth. Her ears clipped the fabric all the same. Her arms were full of sacks that shifted and clanked as she walked, and through the thick fabric, Dinya could see the outlines of something sharp straining.

"He's not my brother," she snapped, affronted. "He's from Solstheim. Fresh off the boat."

"Oh?" Niranye glanced over, raising an eyebrow. "I didn't even know people were still living there." She tucked the bags under the counter, humming to herself, and when she finished, she leaned forward on it. Her arms were folded in front of her, her fingers drumming a soft beat against the wood as she peered at Kren.

Even bent in half like this,s he was still taller than him. "Have you never seen an altmer before?" she asked, amused, for he was staring.

When he flushed red, she laughed.

Niranye had that affect on people. The cause of it had always been something of a mystery to Dinya. The altmer was big and lanky, built like the bag of knives she had just tucked away: rough and soft and sharp in turn, with a curved belly and pointy elbows and a nose that rightfully belonged on the end of a hilt. But right now, in the early morning light and with the sun casting red shadows, she could almost see Niranye's appeal.

The light softened the altmer's features, turned the sharp jut of her brow into something gentler, smoothed out the fine lines around her mouth and eyes. Turned the dull green of her irises, normally a match for the gold of her skin, into something more vibrant.

And then Niranye smiled, a thin, lopsided curl of her lips that threw her face into sharp relief. "He is fresh off the boat, isn't he? Poor thing. Best keep an eye on him, Dinya."

"Now," she continued, "do you have my package?"

Dinya shrugged off the leather strap of the box, slipping it off of her shoulder. The relief was immediate. It was long enuogh since her fall that the adrenaline was finally fading, and each part of her body was protesting in turn. All but her back, newly freed from the box's edges. "Here."

She slid it onto the table. Niranye picked it up immediately, eagerly, her eyes bright.

A moment later, it fell back onto the table with a thump. "Gods damn it all." The altmer rubbed her hand, glaring at the box like it had served her a personal insult. A moment later, she directed it at Dinya. "This is heavy!"

With a huff, Dinya reached out for the box, but Niranye waved her away impatiently. "No, no, I've got it." This time, she picked it up carefully. The only sign of her distress was in the way her shoulders went stiff, like even holding it was a strain. "Give me a moment -"

She walked back to the door, kicked it open, and disappeared into the shadows.

A moment later, she emerged, her hands free of the box and holding something new instead.

Dinya was reaching out for it before she realised what Niranye was carrying, and she pulled them back just in time. The cat dropped onto the table, landing neatly on its feet with only a soft maiow of protest.

"Ambarys told me this was an exchange," Dinya said. The cat was staring at her with sleepy green eyes.

"It is. He gave me my goods, and I brought him miss Fussyfangs here." Niranye reached out, scratching the cat behind an ear fondly. It purred, butting its head against her hand, mouth opened just enough to show its fangs. "But if he's changed his mind, I'll keep her. We used to have cats like this on Summerset," she said, wistful. "Nords don't breed them properly."

The cat was as large as a dog: not the small ratters, even, but big enough that its head was as large as Dinya's palm.

It slammed its head against Niranye's hand again, hard enough that she could hear the slap, and she reassessed. It's head was likely dwarved her palm, and its length was easily as long as long as her arm. There was no way she was going to carry that thing.

"Oh, can I hold her?" Kren said, eager.

The cat had lured him back out of his shell, it seemed: he'd stopped sneaking those furtive glances towards Niranye, and now all of his attention was on the cat.

Niranye shrugged, and he reached out, plucking the cat from the table and settling it on his shoulder like a child. (His bad shoulder, from the way he winced, but he made no move to adjust it.) It was an absurd sight, the boy and the massive feline, made worse by the way he nuzzled his face into its side. "She's so big," he said, awed. "And heavy! They don't get nearly this large at home."

"Good. You can carry it," she informed him, wrinkling her nose. She hardly wanted to bring back some stinking vermin to the cornerclub, but if this was the package Ambarys had wanted.. well, she was simply the courier.

And if she wasn't having to carry the thing, did it really matter?

"Oh, well." Niranye shrugged again, although her gaze lingered on the cat wistfully. "Then that's that. Go back to your foster father, Dinya. Your scowl's scaring off honest business."

"I didn't realise you had any," Dinya said, and Niranye laughed.

Kren seemed less likely to crowd her with the cat in his arms, but he was no less inclined to talk. "So, ah, where are we going?" Between his accent and the way the cat was nuzzling his face, his words were practically nonsense. "To your home?"

"To the cornerclub." Gods above, why did he insist on talking?

"Oh! Is it owned by your foster-father?" Her terse affirmation - and her loud sigh - didn't seem to dissuade him, for he brightened audibly at that. "Oh! Excellent! I didn't even think you had those here, but that's good. I can rent a room, then."

She glanced back at him. There was no purse hanging from his hip, no pockets in which septims could be hiding. He blinked at her and then frowned, jostling the cat a bit in his arms. It was still purring away steadily. "I have money," he said, lifting his chin.

"Just not enough for passage?"

"I couldn't have - he wouldn't have - I have money, that's what matters," he said, defensive. "You do rent rooms, don't you? The cornerclub back home does. And so do the ones in Morrowind."

".. of course we do."

"Then there! It's settled." The cat bumped its face against his, and all at once, the he lost the edge in his voice. "Maybe I can get a meal, too," he said, wistful. "I haven't eaten in days."

The walk back to the Grey Quarter seemed faster now that the crowds were beginning to build. Or perhaps it was just the fact that Kren was with her, and he was the one drawing everyone's eye for once. Either way, it was strangely restful: it was rare that she got to simply blend into a crowd, and let someone else draw everyone's eye.

And once she was back in the Grey Quarter, for the first time that morning, Dinya felt like she could breathe. The warming potion had worn away to almost nothing, leaving her skin pricking painfully in the chill, and her body ached all over, but all around her were familiar sounds and smells. She could hear the sound of pidgin Dunmeris everywhere as people woke, carried in the whisper of distant conversations and in snatches of words from people's cracked windows, and after hours of Cyrodilic, each guttural tone felt like it was lifting a weight from her lungs.

Better yet, here, no one stared at her or Kren. Lleuwyff waved to her as she headed past, but even then, Kren only earned a brief, curious look. New dunmer faces were uncommon, but ultimately, in the Quarter, every grayskin was the same thing:

Family.

And she was eager to get back to hers. Each step that brought her further down the winding road sparked a new surge of urgency, until all she could think about was getting back to the cornerclub. When the familiar arch of the entrance finally came into view, she nearly sprinted to the door, and ignoring Kren's murmur of protest behind her, she flung it open.

The air was heavy with the smell of morning sujamma and stewing vegetables. There were familiar faces at all of the tables, tucked away at the hearth, and none spared her more than a passing glance.

She was home.

There were only a handful of dunmer in the cornerclub this early. Mesmer wasn't there yet, to her disappointment. She supposed he was still at the temple, then. If there was a pattern to which he attended, she'd yet to discern it: but she'd thought for sure he would have been done by now.

Perhaps he'd be here by the time she was done with Ambarys, then. All she wanted to do was get a meal and talk to Mesmer, and then she could sleep away the rest of the day.

The other patrons of the club were largely still half-asleep, drowsing over their sujamma, but Revyn was wide-awake as always. He looked up from his book as they entered, staring at them both with open curiousity.

"Oh!" When Dinya glanced his way, he grinned at her, raising his eyebrows. "Dinya! It's so good to see you. Out on the roofs again, I see. Find anything interesting?"

"What am I saying, of course you did. Who's this?" Kren was peering back with equal interest, leaning in like he was about to respond.

"Too young for you," she said over him, terse, and Revyn laughed, shaking his head.

"You always think the worst of me, cousin." He took a long draft of his drink, the skin under his eyes crinkled. "So cruel! Very well, then. Best get back to your foster-father, hm? I do believe he was looking for you."

Kren cast a wistful look over his shoulder as Dinya made her way over to the counter. "I'm not that young," he said wistfully.

"Of course you aren't." She rolled her eyes, for all that he couldn't see it. Not that young: with that face, with his size, he was forty if he was a day past it. The counter was empty, but there was noise from the backroom. Voices? "If you're a day over twenty, I'll pay for your room for you," she said idly.

There was a pause, and then a brief, husky laugh. "I suppose you owe me two rooms, then! I'm fifty."

Dinya paused. "You are not." Her hand was on the handle of the door to the back room, but she didn't turn it quite yet: she turned and squinted at Kren instead, but there was no sign he was joking.

He was actually smiling at her, head cocked to the side, jostling the cat idly. In his eyes, lit bright by the fire, she could see her own incredulous expression. "I'd never have been brave enough to get off the island when I was twenty," he said. "I'd never even get away from my family long enough to even think about it."

Little Kren, small and round and with a face soft as the cat he was carrying, was older than her. The thought kept bubbling back up, but it wouldn't stick: no matter how she turned it over, she couldn't believe it.

She did not have to think of it for long. The doorknob turned under her hand and she startled back just in time to avoid the door striking her in the face. Ambarys stepped through, his hair tussled, and he shut it behind him with a click.

"Dinya! You're back! Excellent!"

He paused, looking at her. His eyes flitted down to her feet, then to the scraps on her clothes, then finally, to her hands. Then he was in front of her, taking them with a sharp hiss of air through his teeth. "What happened?" he demanded, turning them over.

She scoffed, pulling her hands free from his grip. "Nothing, Ambarys. I'm fine. Niranye has your package, and we brought --"

"Hello, sera! We have your cat!" Kren stepped forward, holding up the cat in front of him like a prize. For all of its size, it had to be the most docile beast she'd ever seen: if it weren't for the slow, steady hitch of its breath, she might've thought it dead for the way it hung there. "Shall I take it to the kitchen for you?"

Ambarys stared at him, and Kren's good cheer wilted. "Ah," he said, glancing towards Dinya in a silent plea.

She was of no help. She was staring as well, her brow furrowed, and when the silence dragged on, he added: "For butchering?"

Perhaps the cat wasn't as docile as Dinya thought, for at that, it stopped purring.

The silence was shattered by Ambarys's laughter. He clapped a hand on Kren's shoulder, shaking his head. "You're from Morrowind, aren't you, brother? Ah, you're reminding me of childhood. My mother did used to serve us cat sometimes. Considered it her special dish."

"But no, none of that today," he said, and plucked the cat out of Kren's limp grip. "And what's your name?"

"Kren. His name's Kren." It was strange to have Ambarys's attention redirected so thoroughly. Normally, if she was injured, he'd stay and fuss: demand she take soak one of the bandages in a healing pot and keep her hand wrapped until the tissue knit. Make a comment about being careful. Let her know that she needed to take less risks.

She had pulled away because it was intolerable, given her age, but she'd never thought of what she'd do if he took her at her word.

It was a strange feeling.

"Well. If you're looking for a place to rest your head, we've always got room for a fellow dunmer. Dinya can show you. I would, but..." He clicked his tongue at the cat, raising his eyebrows when it trilled back. It was less affectionate than it had been with Kren, but Dinya supposed that was to be expected. Her foster-father's face wasn't nearly as welcoming. "I suppose I should take care of our new resident, first."

"And take some soap to those feet, Dinya, you're tracking blood," he added, and disappeared back behind the door.


	2. REMES

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which families are met, dates are arranged, and an unexpected guest arrives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter plays loosely with the inheritance laws outlined in Notes on Racial Phylogeny, namely:
> 
> "Generally the offspring bear the racial traits of the mother, though some traces of the father's race may also be present."

“I heard that there’s a new Dragonborn.”

This early in the morning, the temple was empty and dark. The only sound in the room was the crackle of the candles high above, the gentle rasp of the priests, sleeping in the alcove scarce feet away -

\- and the soft whine of the stone door as it creaked open, and his sister stepped inside.

There was a reason that Remes always came this early each morning, long before the sun or the city’s inhabitants rose. In a few hours, the halls would be swelling with the first wave of worshipers and petitioners come bearing prayers and gifts for the altar. By noon, the temple would be unbearable. The small hall would be packed with bodies, echoing with the sound of words both murmured and shouted, stinking and hot and fetid in the way only a crowd could bring.

He didn’t resent it. How could he? Everyone had heard the stories of what was happening outside of the city walls: tales of worshipers dragged off by guards, of people taken in the night, snatched off the streets, of black-clad mer asking questions where any answer would end in blood.

Windhelm’s temple was the last place in Skyrim that Talos could be worshiped in peace without fear of Imperial retribution. Ever since Dawnstar had fallen to the Imperials, it was the last place in Skyrim that was still safe.

To resent the newcomers would’ve been dreadful, and so he didn’t. (It wasn’t as if the temple belonged to him in the first place, for all that it felt like it ought.) But it was easy to miss the quiet of the temple of old, and right now - before the sun had risen, when most of the city’s inhabitants were still asleep - was the only time that the temple ever truly felt like it used to.

Haltafi had quieted, but he could feel her gaze on him, making the silence hang heavy as any words. He knew his sister. She wouldn’t leave until he spoke.

“That’s what everyone says,” he said, and relenting, he finally looked back.

“Do you think that they’re Talos reborn?” Standing in the doorway, lit by the flickering lights of the candle, her gray hair looked golden as she peered up towards the statue. Talos loomed large over the two of them, his face nothing but shadows and angles at this distance.

As a child, Remes had fancied he had no face at all: that the sculptor had grown bored, and simply focused all of his attention on carving the flowers at the bottom, the folds of his robes. But Haltafi had told him that wasn’t the case, on one of the rare nights she had joined him in the temple.

His sister was like most Nords. She worshiped the Divines idly, as an after-thought: to stand in the temple and feel the gaze on one of them on her must’ve been strange, for after a moment, Haltafi looked away, her head tilting back towards him.

“I think,” he said, turning to face her fully, “you aren’t supposed to be up. How did you sneak past Mother?”

“Oh, shove it, Mes.” Encumbered as she was, she was waddling up the aisle briskly, a hand on her hip as if to keep her balance. When he started to get up from the altar, she waved him down with a tired sort of impatience. “Gods above, I’m fine. I swear! The last time I was pregnant, there wasn’t nearly this much fuss. In fact, I was –”

“– off in the thick of battle, cutting down the knife-ears with a skinning knife, I know.”

“Don’t be daft,” she said comfortably. "I had an axe. And let me tell you, it was a great deal harder to sprint around, hauling that thing, than it is to walk with this.” Over the past few months, the curve of her belly had swollen. The last time he’d seen her, nearly two moons ago, it had been little more than a bump: now it was gargantuan, easily dwarfing the fine bones of her hand as she patted it. “And I didn’t have to sneak past Mother.”

When he eyed her, she admitted: “- she was still asleep when I left. Else she’d have never let me leave the house. Woman thinks this is my first time fighting this battle.”

“Is that what you’re calling it now?”

“What else is it? There’s blood, frothing, you’ll end up blowing your lungs out -”

She grimaced, and the hand on her hip tightened, digging into the cloth. “And it certainly feels like a battle," Hiltafa said, shaking her head. "Gods. You were too little to remember, but gods. It’d hurt less if the little bastard had a knife. At least it’d be over quicker, eh?”

“Well, if you ask, I’m sure Hermir will make it one.” Remes glanced up towards the ceiling thoughtfully. “Put a little grip on it and everything, wrap it in little Stormcloak colours.”

"And how would she get it to the little wretch? Never mind, don’t answer or else I’ll have to slap you,” she said with a laugh. “Just stop, will you? You’re trying to distract me, brother, and it won’t work.”

“Now. This Dragonborn fellow. D’you figure he’s Talos reborn or not?”

For a moment, Haltafi almost sounded serious.

Standing up, Remes made a show of dusting off his clothes. The drab brown of his tunic and leggings, almost uniform, hid any dirt or dust as neatly as any spell, but still he swept his hand across the cloth, wiping away fibers and the occasional golden hair. “I didn’t think I’d spent this much time in here,” he said lightly, “that my own sister would go and mistake me for a priest.”

"I have to admit, it is rather flattering to be mistaken for such an exalted station,” he continued, clasping a hand to his heart, “but alas! I am still but a simple soldier’s son –”

“– no, no, stop it.”

A moment ago, she had been laughing. The light of the temple flickered oddly on Haltafi’s face, made her looked pinched and wan.

If it had been anyone else, he might’ve said she was distressed: but then she shifted, the lighting changed, and she was just his sister again, the blur of her face drawn tight with the strength of her disapproval. “Because they’re saying he’s a grayskin,” she said. She tilted her head, and the light caught her eyes, glistening red. “And a grayskin can’t be Dragonborn, can he?”

"That's a very good question," a voice said from behind them.

The door to the aclove had creaked open without either of them noticing, and now Jora stood there, a hand curled in front of her mouth.

The priestess was yawning, her eyes mere blurs in the haze of her face. "But one better suited to the daylight hours, I think."

"Or at least until after breakfast," she said, tilting her face up towards the windows. "It isn't even dawn, is it?"

Jora didn't sound annoyed. But that didn't stop Remes's throat from tightening, because she did sound exhausted. If the war had been difficulton everyone, the Temple had been struck the worst of all. When he'd been a boy, there'd been a dozen clergy members maintaining te temple, managing the festivities and handling the crowds.

Now there was just Jora.

"We were just leaving," he blurted out. "My apologies for waking you."

"It's alright." She yawned again, scrubbing at her hair. "There's no need to apologise, Remes."

Her gown had slipped to expose one pale shoulder. Jora had always been wan, a silver slip of a woman, but he had never been able to see the blue curve of veins under her skin before. "Are the two of you here to pray?"

"No." Hiltafa stretched. Her back creaked with the effort of it. "I just came to visit Mes."

"And I'm about to go," she added. "No need to leave on my account, brother."

"I can hardly let you walk home alone, can I?"

Haltafi snorted at him. "I got here by myself," she said, as if it was quite reasonable. "Don't be a fool."

Perhaps it would've erupted into a proper argument if Jora hadn't intervened. Remes didn't consider himself quick to anger, but there was never anything as chafing as Haltafi's brusque dismissals, like he was still the child of six that had been her shadow those first years after the war.

That'd been over twenty years ago, but his sister never seemed to remember that.

"The two of you should go together," the priestess said now, mild, and Haltafi glanced at her side-long, her mouth thin.

But Jora's face was bland. "It'll make me feel better," she continued, "to know neither of you is out by yourself. With the guards as stressed as they are..."

None of them looked at Remes, but they didn't need to.

Haltafi gave a great sigh, as if even the idea was a great burden. "Oh, well. If it's for Mes's sake.. come along, brother." She rolled her shoulders back, stretching again, and then drew herself up straight. "I suppose it's best if I'm back in the nest before Mother wakes. Gods forbid she starts going gray over this."

Jora didn't sigh with relief, but the door to the aclove was already clicking shut before they had left the temple.

The temple of Talos was never really warm. It was too old: the oldest shrine on the province, if one listened to the clergy, and full of holes and gaps that let the air in. No matter how many tapestries Jora hung on the walls, and no matter how high she stoked the hearths, there was always a faint breeze, carrying the scent of the sea and a chill that could cut straight to the bones.

And it had been frigid tonight. Coal had been expensive ever since the war had began: it was only easily found in Solitude's mines, and those had been the first place that the Imperials had begun patrols. Now they were having to have it hauled in from Riften, where the prices were high, and the jarl seemed keen to make them pay for every individual piece.

Lortheim spent most of his days at the palace - doing what, Remes was never quite sure, but it brought a steady stream of coal in to the temple all the same. Not enough to keep it warm, though. Even through the thick leather of his breeches, his knees felt as if he'd been kneeling on ice, rather than merely stone.

Compared to outside, the temple had been an oven.

The first gust of cold air felt like a slap. His breath was coming out in frigid streams, and cringing, he kept his mouth pressed tight into a thin slash. It was only Hearthfire, but it might as well have been Sun's Dusk. If it had begun to snow, he wouldn't have been surprised.

Of course he'd left his cloak at home. It was only Hearthfire, and he'd expected a chill, but nothing like this.

Haltafi glanced at him, her lips curling. "Here," she said, and shrugged off her cloak.

"Haltafi," he objected, but she merely waved him off, and he wrapped it tightly around his shoulders before she could think twice, burying his face in the high fur collar. It helped with the chatter of his teeth, but not much.

She snorted, lifting her chin. No one had the right to look that smug. "Honestly, Mes, living down hill is making you soft. It's barely even cold. But here, let me help --" Batting his hands away, she tied the laces of his cloak herself, tugging them until they laid taut against his throat. "Gods. And I thought you were supposed to be walking me home."

"I am." His voice was muffled by the fur. He refused to care. Looking at his sister now, she looked all Nord: if she even felt the chill, she showed no signs of it, not even in the prickling of her skin. "I'm not worried about you being mugged. Haven't you seen Viola's pamphlets?"

She clicked her tongue at him, derisive. "That woman's nothing but nonsense."

"She's mad as a hatter," he said, "but they're not untrue. Everyone's talking about the Butcher, even down in the Quarter."

Oh, don't call him that." Haltafi sneered. "He's not a butcher. That takes skill. Any coward can sneak up on a stranger and slit their throat."

"Especially the girls he's gone after. Friga was barely twenty," she said, disgusted. "Not even married yet. He's probably just some jealous dog. That's the way it usually is. What, are people worried about this? Really?"

She spun to face him, and he had to reach out to snatch her arm, because for a moment, it looked like she was doing to topple. "Because that's daft. Tell them they're being absurd," she demanded. "The guard'll take care of it. This isn't the first time some bastard's taken an inkling to start running mad, and we've handled it every other time."

He slid underneath her arm, letting it hang loose on his shoulder. There were many responses sitting right at the tip of his tongue, but her face had gone ruddy, and her ears were red with outrage. (Or perhaps the cold. Or perhaps both.) "I've tried," he settled on instead.

He could've told her that no one in the Quarter trusted the guard, not when they set the likes of Rolff to patrolling every night. But Haltafi was the head of the office, when she wasn't laid up with a babe, and she had no interest in listening to dark elf complaints.

Or really, his.

His sister was seventeen years older than him, and she'd helped raise him when his grandparents had begun to grow tired of his energy and she'd needed something after coming back from the war. Too stricken to serve with the guards yet, she'd been his nanny and his mother and his playmate all at once, and she'd never really outgrown any of those roles.

It made dealing with her difficult sometimes, but she'd always encouraged him to argue back. He would've now, but something about this pregnancy had everyone worried. The healers had told their mother she wasn't to be stressed, or bothered, or even on her feet - which seemed like the best way to stress her, but no one was interested in listening to that, either.

"Well, they're elves. They're made to be daft." Haltafi nudged him, swaying a little on the uneven ground. Her fingers dug into his shoulder briefly, nails curling in the fabric, and then she was patting him. "Don't you worry about it, yeah? Just leave the killer to the guards. He's some drunk wretch of a man. We always turn them out soon enough."

* * *

Escorting Haltafi back to the house was a task in itself. For all of her protests, and his own doubts, the pregnancy was taking a visible toll on her: she kept having to stop to catch her breath in the crisp winter air, and by the time they made it to the actual rowhouse, her face had gone from ruddy to red as the tomatoes in the market.

Haltafi had never married. After the Great War had ended, she had simply moved into the guard's barracks, where she had lived with the urchins and the unmarried, first working in the guard, and then eventually leading them. When the rebellion had started, she'd been on the front line of the Stormcloaks, up until the pregnancy had begun to show.

And after she'd been sent back to Windhelm, she'd reluctantly moved back into their parents home for the first time in thirty two years.

Remes had only been inside their parents home a handful of times, and none of those stilted visits had lasted long enough to make any lasting impression. All he could ever remember was the sour-sweet tang of his mother's perfume, and her dark hands, knotted nervously in the fabric of her skirt. But the exterior of the building had always struck him as intimidating. It was nearly three stories high in the way that most Windhelm homes were, but with the sort of deep-set windows and doorways that made it look as if each archway was a gaping maw.

Most of them were dark.

The one in the attic was lit, though, casting a dappled ray down on the path in front of it. As they stepped into the light, the curtains behind the frame shifted - and then the patch of light went dark.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Haltafi moaned. "She's awake."

"Try to be brave." Taking off the cloak, he draped it across her shoulders, wrapping the ties in a loose sort of knot. She'd be taking it off in a moment anyway. "What's the worse she can do? Tie you to the bed?"

"Don't give her ideas." They could hear the rustle of movement behind the door, the soft shriek of iron scraping against steel. The key in the lock. "Go on, then," she said with a sigh. "Best flee before she sees you."

Leaning down, he pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. "If she gets too much, remind her that Mara says to be nice to your children. I'm sure that'll work."

She made furious shooing noises, and stepping back onto the road, he began to briskly walk away. The door cracked open. Then there were voices behind him, pitched high: his mother's clipped voice, Haltafi's irritated one.

After he'd gotten several feet, he looked back. He was used to seeing Haltafi and seeing a mirror of himself, only softer, but each time he saw his mother, it was a shock. Both he and his sister had inherited her long, straight nose, her hooded eyes, her full lips.

But there was something surreal in seeing their features made cruel by the heavy brow, and the slate gray skin. Stranger still was the fact that, standing face-to-face, Haltafi with her graying hair looked like she should be Llemisa's mother. They spoke for a moment, their faces lit by the soft light of the open doorway, and then something Haltafi said made their mother's lip curl. Llemisa kissed her teeth in disgust. She spun on her heel, her skirts catching the air around her in a softer imitation of Haltafi's movements, and stalked inside.

When Haltafi followed her inside, it was as if the building had swallowed them whole.

High above him, the sky was brightening with streaks of pink and purple. Returning to the temple was out of the question: it would be packed with refugees by now, all eager to get a glimpse of the last surviving shrine and to receive a blessing from Jora. While he could return home, his little house on the outskirts of the Quarter held no appeal - and neither did the work he still had sitting there, waiting for him to return home and finish it.

But he could always head to the market and see if Niranye was around. The thought settled some of the unease that seeing his mother had wrought. Remes had high hopes for the high elf. Niranye was gorgeous, with features smoother and softer than most elves ever managed: looking at her in the right light, with her straight nose and curved lips, she could nearly pass as a Breton. And best of all, she had the sharpest wit in Windhelm.

Niranye never gave him discounts, and she never bartered, but she always smiled when she saw him. Sometimes she even smirked at his jokes, and if it was derisive - well, she was still _laughing,_ wasn't he? He figured that had to mean _something_.

He lived in hope.

He was halfway to the market when he turned and entered Candlehearth Hall instead.

If Dinya had been with him, he reflected, she would've boxed his ears. She viewed Candlehearth with a sort of superstitious fear common to most of the dark elves, as if he might die merely for entering. The tavern was the unofficial home to the Guard, after all, and the favored home of the Stormcloaks, most of whom for which the Great War was still fresh in their minds.

Elves weren't welcome in Candlehearth. But he'd never looked like much of an elf.

He was still young enough that his brow had yet to grow in, if it ever would. Haltafi was forty seven, with a face full of lines and hair that'd already gone gray, and yet she'd never grown the bony plate that marked an elf as surely as their ears. And when he was six, Haltafi had sat him down on one of the chairs, given him a glass of beer and taken care of those.

The first cut of the blade had him bent in half, but it'd been worth it. By the time they'd healed, they were round as any Nords, if a little ragged.

His eyes were still red, and stretched long in a way Nords didn't often get. But his skin was as ruddy as anyone else's, and he'd found that few people paid much mind to his eyes when he smiled and began to talk.

Thankfully, Elda was one of them. "Morning, Remes," she called from behind the bar. "How's your sister? She had the baby yet?"

"Not yet." He smiled at her, raising his eyebrows. "Or, well, not as of an hour ago. I suppose she could've popped it out since then - isn't that how it goes? Just.." He made a sliding sort of motion with his hands, and Elda laughed.

"Oh, don't we just wish." She shook her head, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Gods, that'd be wonderful. Nah, she ain't had it, then. Too bad. Rolf was just in, asking about when she's going to get back with the guards. He's missed her, poor thing."

His back was safely to her, so Elda couldn't see the way he rolled his eyes. "I'm sure everyone has," he said, and it was easy to keep his voice sympathetic. "Well, tell them she's chomping at the bit to get back to work. I think she's planning on hopping out of bed and straight back to battlefield."

"I thought she had a babe before! Ahh, she's going to be in for a rough awakening. _You're_ bad enough, with all this popping out nonsense, but _she_ ought to know it doesn't work like that. Birth takes the fire right out of you. She's going to be laid up for days. Never mind fighting the Imperials: she isn't even going to feel like patrolling."

"But she'll find out," she sighed, shaking her head. "Right back on the field.. hmph. Tell her to send a courier when she's got the sprog out, will you? I've got some old blankets for her lined up for her. Soft as anything. The baby ought to like 'em."

The rest of the trip through the bar was met with similar demands. Everyone knew Haltafi, from the cook to the chambergirl to the soldiers sitting at the table, and everyone wanted to know how she was, for the healers had forbid her visitors early on. And everyone had something for him to bring to her: advice, mostly, but reminders that they had gifts, blankets, things that might be useful for any new mother, and could easily be brought as soon as she could take visitors.

Even quiet Calixto waved him over, and pressed something into his hands. It was a handkerchief, wrapped tight around something: when he opened it, a twisting nexus of stormclouds curved up towards him. They'd been carved out of wood and painstackingly stained, so that if it hadn't been for the loop of hemp curled around it, he might've thought it a figure instead of a medallion. "For the baby," the shopkeep said, with a small, pleased smile. "I had some spare wood, and.. well. I appreciate all that the guards do."

"She'll love it. I'll give it to her first thing," Remes promised, slipping it into his pocket.

Rolff himself wasn't in the bar, thank the Nine, but the rest of the night shift was all crowded together at one of the center tables, and upon seeing him, there was a great uproar. The guards of Windhelm were a loud, boisterous lot. Once their ranks had been made up of many different stripes of Nords, but when Ulric had called upon them, all that could had stripped their helms for a cloak instead.

The people who remained were the dregs: too old, or worn, or ill-suited to war, or the soldiers who had been sent back.

In short, fellows like his sister, who had nearly ripped out her own hair with frustration when Galmarr had snatched her off the field and back to Windhelm when her belly had first begun to round.

He could practically hear Dinya snarling in the back of his head. (Sometimes, he felt as if he should be looking over his shoulder, her voice was so clear: don't talk to the guards, she'd be hissing. Don't draw their attention!) But Remes had grown up in the guards barracks, taking tea and treats and the occasional smack from most of these men and women, and so he let himself be dragged over to the table, where he was plied with honey in exchange for word of his sister. He was in the middle of telling them about his plans to buy the babe a knife and a cloak, the better to head out onto battle, when someone tapped his shoulder.

He tilted his head back to see who it was, and straight into Susanna's cleavage.

Susanna was one of the barrackrats he had grown up with: an urchin who, like him, had been given free reign of the guardhouse's beds and pantries from a young age in exchange for running errands. And like him, she had never joined the guard, no matter how much Haltafi had tried to coax her. Instead, as soon as Elda had deemed her old enough, she'd started working at Candlehearth.

A damn waste, Haltafi always complained, but Remes had never been able to blame her. Susanna always looked much more at home with a tray in her hand than she ever had with a sword.

"Ah! Just the girl I was looking for. Have I ever told you, Sue, you're simply the loveliest girl in town?" From this angle, he was staring directly up her chin and nose. Her eyes and lashes blurred together into one large, white mass, horrific in its size, but at least it made it easy to see her roll them.

"Good morning to you, too, Rem," Susanna said, and then she flicked him in the nose with her free hand. "You can move now, love."

He straightened up. Most of the guards simply looked amused: some of them, the younger lot, were eyeing him with the glassy-eyed envy of someone who wished that they could get away with the same. He winked at them, then he turned sideways in his chair, leaning on the table so that he could look at her properly.

Remes had never thought much of Susanna's appearance. Even as a child, his gaze had been drawn to the softer lines of the Breton girls, the faded tans and olives of the Imperials: the strangers with gentle, sloped features and curls that spoke of a world beyond the walls of Windhelm.

And there was nothing of Susanna that was _not_ of Windhelm. If someone had stripped the ice from the ground, the stone from the walls and formed it into a woman, then she would pale in comparison: Susanna was as if the city herself had stood, shaking the snow from her shoulders, and begun to speak. She had the sharp, square jaw of most Nords, the clear-cut blue eyes, the frizzy blonde hair that hung in a thick curtain around her face. And, because Windhelm was not all Nord, no matter what Rolff said, she had the full lips and hooked nose of a dark elf.

(She'd told him once, when they were children, that her mother had been a dark elf.)

(But no elf kept a man's child for long.)

"I don't suppose you have a moment?" he asked hopefully.

"For you?" She tilted her head to the side, her eyes twinkling. "Oh. I don't know, love. I've got this entire table to go -"

He swept to his feet. "Then I'll help," he announced, and snagged the tray from her hand.

"Remes!" She laughed, reaching for it, but he ducked away, holding it high above his head. Susanna had inherited her mother's size: she had to leap to try and snatch it back. "Give it back!"

"I'm helping! Now - which of you fellows ordered the.." He sniffed the nearest mug and curled his lip. "Ah, honey-mead horse-piss?"

"That'll be me," one of the guards said, and he slid her the mug. The rest of the order continued in the same way: another mug of horse-piss, three cups of something he derisively deemed rain-water, and a cup of something that he took one sniff of and threatened to dump.

"You should be ashamed of yourself, Hogni," he said sadly, sliding it onto the table. Hogni snatched it with the defensive air of a man who's paid entirely too much for his drink. "This is a _crime._ "

"I've still got other tables, you bastard." Susanna huffed at him, folding her arms. "Are you going to handle those as well?"

He squinted at her thoughtfully. "Do I get to keep the tips?"

She rolled her eyes, and hauled him out to the hallway.

The hallway was blessedly empty, for all that he could still hear the chop of a knife cutting downstairs and the faint snatches of voices, drifting in from the pub proper. No one was out here: just him, Susanna, and a mouse, who flattened itself to the ground and took off skittering upon seeing them. "You need to get a cat," he told her.

"You know Elda hates them, love. Brunwulf's been trying to convince her to get a ratter, but..." She shrugged. "But never mind _that._ What do you need, Remes?" she asked, pushing back her hair. "This isn't an emergency, is it?"

"No, no. And nothing's wrong with Haltafi, either," he said quickly, because he could already see that question forming. What did he want? To talk to her, mostly, for he rarely got a chance to see her.

And then the idea struck him. "Do you still want to see the Cornerclub?"

She stared at him.

Nords weren't welcome in the Gray Quarter, not without a sponsor, and sometimes even then. It was nothing official: no guard would escort you out, even if there had been guards to be found during the day. It was just that the likelihood of waking up in a gutter grew higher the rounder one's ears got.

Or not waking up at all. But that'd only happened the once, back long before he'd been born. Dead Nords meant trouble and the jarls fury, and no one wanted to deal with that.

Susanna had never been inside the Quarter. Haltafi had warned them both away when they were children, and as adults.. well, perhaps Remes had encouraged her to stay out. When the nights grew cold and the Red Fever was jumping from home to home like wildfire, even he found the way people's gazes lingered on him to be unsettling. But she'd always listened to the stories he'd brought back with a sort of wide-eyed eagerness, drinking them in like they were something magnificent.

".. 'course I do, love," she said now, slowly. "Why?"

"Well! Would you like to come tonight? You can meet Dinya." He hadn't thought of this before he'd come, honestly, but that was the way ideas came to him: all at once, and all the more lovely for it. The more he spoke, the more it formed, taking shape and gaining form with each word. "You'll love her," he said eagerly, "she's the one I'm always telling you about - big, gray, and dour? Climbs walls? She won't love you at first, of course - she hates _everything_ \- but she'll warm up. We'll have to keep you away from Ambarys, of course, but Revyn's a sweet sort.. and, oh, you could meet Virvyn!"

"The beggar?"

"We call him the king of the streets," he corrected. "A few coins is his just due. What do you say?" He took a hold of her hands and knelt on the ground. Tilting his chin up, he grinned at her, all teeth: "Come with me tonight."

She hesitated, and he added: "- I'll pay for your food."

"You do know how to win a girl over, don't you? Fine." She took her hand back, patting his cheek like he was a dog, and then she haul him up. (His knees creaked. Kneeling on the temple floor, and the long walk here had done him no favors.) Then she glanced down. "How should I dress? Is this fine?"

They both took a moment to consider her dress. ".. maybe something a little less, ah, showy," he said at last. "We wouldn't want your bits freezing off. That'd be a _tragedy._ But as long as you've got something on, it'll be fine. Don't try to blend, it won't work," he advised her. "Especially not with that face."

"Oh? Is there something wrong with my face?" She tilted her head to the side, contemplative. "I'm told it's a very nice face."

"Of course not. You're the most beautiful girl in the hall," he assured her, "it's only just - you know -" He fanned out his hands in front of him, curved underneath his chin to emphasize the wide arch. "Very _Nordic._ "

She laughed, and he almost dodged in time to avoid the smack.

* * *

They agreed to meet in front of the cornerclub at dusk. Even having never set foot inside of the Quarter, she knew where it was: everyone in the city did, from rumor alone. And it was a safe enough jaunt for her to make, killer or no.

After that, she didn't have time to dawdle. There were tables to be cleaned, orders to be written, and when they re-joined the pub, it was to find Elda had climbed to her feet. Susana left in a rush of skirts, and Remes spent the rest of the morning with the guard. They trickled out one-by-one, until finally it was just him, and then he came to his feet.

His home wasn't far from Candlehearth: a little slip in the wall he had inherited from his Nordic grandparents, after the fever had taken them in his twentieth year. It was in spitting distance of the Quarter, close enough that the air reeked of burning skins and boiled leathers, and his neighbours were all like him: elves and half-breeds and Imperials, who weren't quite welcome in the city proper.

But it was comfortable for all of its size, with one room downstairs, and a loft just large enough for his bed above. If it was small, that just meant it was easier to keep warm. He spent the rest of the morning, and much of the evening, stripping the thread from the clothes Revyn had brought him from the ragpicker and sewing them into something new.

By the time the sun had begun to set, he'd managed two pairs of pants and a shirt. Revyn would take them to someone else later to have them dyed a uniform shade of black, the better to hide the stitches and joints, but for now, Remes's part was done. He'd take them to the storekeep and get his pay..

.. as soon as he finished the rest of the pile of scraps, still looming beside him.

But that would a chore for tomorrow. The day's light was fading, his fingers were sore, and he wasn't of a mind to waste a candle on work, not when he had coins in his pocket still. And not when he was supposed to be meeting Susanna. His back creaked in dismay as he straightened up his table, ran a quick razor over the stubble of his face, and then headed back out into the cold.

The Gray Quarter had once been called the Snow Quarter. That'd been two hundred years ago, back when the only dark elves had been merchants and adventurers, disinclined to settle. It'd been beautiful back then, with high walls, frost-resistant plants and white-washed stone. There'd been benches, and market stalls outside, and doors painted all the colours that couldn't be found elsewhere in Windhelm. The first time he'd seen a picture of one in the guardhouse, painted by some early resident, it'd left him breathless.

The eruption of the Red Mountain had brought thousands fleeing into Windhelm, and they'd taken over the Gray Quarter like weeds in a field. New additions to the buildings had crept up as the population had grown, and the space available had shrunk: rickety rooms, built of wood and mud and inching up the stone like vines. The once-narrow streets were now mere alleys, made tight with all sorts of over-spill from the houses. Tables were crowded against close to the walls, and filled with dishes and ragged toys, with crates and barrels and thinning baskets stacked underneath.

Even the air was crowded with the scent of sujamma, wet clothes, the sour tang that came from too many bodies packed too closely together. If he looked up, he knew he'd see the laundry lines hanging from the windows, and elves sitting in or leaning against them, calling to their neighbors in Dunmeris.

It made his skin itch. Everything about the Quarter was claustrophobic, from the loom of the buildings to the crowds around him. Not many elves were out - most of them were just now returning from the day's work. But it was enough that the streets felt crowded, and each brush of skin againsnt his set his teeth to edge.

By the time he reached the cornerclub, he was more than ready to sit down at a table and wait for Susanna. (It was striking him, too late, that he should've offered to escort her. But she had never been bothered by crowds, even if they were gray. She'd be fine.)

(He hoped.)

"Mesmer!"

He'd thought to find Dinya inside. He hadn't expected that she'd be waiting outside for him. And with a _stranger._

He hadn't grown up with the dark elves. He'd only met Dinya a decade ago, when a spill from the roof had sent her tumbling into him. (He'd broken her fall quite effectively: while he'd ended up scraped skin and holes where the ice had chewed through his clothes, the worst she'd come out of it with was bruises.) He didn't know all of their names. But he did know their faces, and the round, short fellow standing next to Dinya wasn't one of the Quarter's natives.

Well. He knew their faces, to a certain definition of _'knowing'_ , and though the boys features were unusually, distinctively elfin, he very well might've been one of the younger elves. There were certainly enough of them.

No, it was the fact the poor fellow was decked out in red was really what clued him in.

"Dinya!" He stepped in for a hug, holding out his arms, and then dropped them when she just looked at him. "Ah. No? And here I thought you must've missed me dreadfully," he said sadly. "With the shouting and everything. Or did you forget I can hear?"

"I didn't forget. You just don't listen." She actually smirked at him, and then she nudged the fellow beside her. "Krem," she said, "this is Mesmer. Mesmer, this is Krem. He's from Solstheim."

Ah. That explained the clothes.

"So nice to see a new face." He held out his arms. Krem gave him a look, and with his tiny nose, it made him look like a particularly round, startled dove. "No hugs from you either? Gods, you people are killing me."

He dropped them with a heave of his shoulders. "I thought dark elves were supposed to be a loving lot," he said mournfully. "So, Krem-from-Solstheim - you're not one of Ambarys's boys, are you?"

"He's not related," Dinya snapped.

"Ahhh." He made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat, and then he clapped his hands together like he'd come to a conclusion. "I see! Then Dinya's gone and adopted you? Taken you under her wing out of the goodness of her heart? I never knew she was so loving."

The face she was making was not very loving at all.

"Um," Kren said.

"Congratulations!" Dark elves weren't very fond of strangers touching them, so he folded his arms, the better to keep from patting Kren. (For that matter, neither were nords.) "I suppose this makes the two of us practically brothers. Good! I always wanted a younger one."

".. what? No?" Kren said, worried. He had on that glassy, bewildered stare most folks got after a few minutes of Remes talking, but he had to give the boy credit: he recovered quick. "How do you figure that?"

"Ditya's like a mother to me," Remes explained, ignoring the way she was staring. If looks could kill, then Ditya would have been the next Butcher. Personally, he blamed it on the brows. They'd grown in when she was practically a babe, and she'd mastered the glower long before she'd managed learned to smile.

(She still hadn't quite managed that, if he was frank.)

"And if she's my mother, and she's taken you so kindly to her bosom, then that means you're my brother."

"Although..." He clicked his tongue, glancing down at his arm. He was pale, pink as any Nord, and covered in spots. Krem's skin was practically a match for his hair, darker than he'd ever seen an elf. "I suppose there _is_ the issue of parentage. Ditya, you slag," he said, shaking his head: "Whatever will Ambarys say? I don't think there's a proper dark elf man between the two of us."

"Shut up, Mesmer," Dinya said. "You're being a wretch. And you're confusing Kren."

Kren smiled weakly. "No, no, it's alright! We can be brothers. I don't have any, either," he added. "Just sisters."

"Sisters! Really. As in multiple?" Dinya gave him a sharp look, but Remes paid her no mind. "I've only got the one, and that's considered a big family around these parts. How many do you have?"

Kren shrugged. "Ahh..." His eyebrows knit, and his mouth opened, then shut, as if for all the world he was counting silently. At any given moment, Remes expected him to start counting his fingers. ".. six? But, ah, my parents are very old! So it wasn't all at once."

"And none of these six sisters could afford you fare?" Dinya sounded incredulous.

Remes blinked. "What?" he asked, curious, but at the same time, Kren said: "Well, of course not. They're dead."

"Solstheim's bad for children," he explained, as mildly as if he was explaining the weather. "All the ash. I'm the only one that survived twenty."

Dinya's face had gone pale, but Remes supposed it made a sort of sense. Child death was common enough in Windhelm: every winter, there were rumors that some orphan or another had been found in the snowstacks, their skin blued and their faces iced shut by the chill. And the city was big. No amount of healers or alchemists could ever stop the swell of the red fever each year, and there was little use in wasting their energies on the young. If a child caught it, their fate was up to Stendarr.

He rarely paid them mind. Haltafi's son had died of it only weeks after his birth, when the fever had ravaged the Nord battalion.

"Ah, bad luck there." Remes shook his head to dispell that thought. "And look," he said, "we've gone and upset Dinya. Here, why don't I buy us a round of sujamma? Whatever type you'd like." It'd add some colour back to her face.

And perhaps it would sweeten her mood. Dinya didn't like Nords. She wasn't going to take his inviting Susanna to the cornerclub well - but, well, Susanna wasn't precisely a nord, was she?

He'd just have to make sure that Dinya understood that.

"No."

He blinked at her. ".. no? Would you prefer water? It's a bit cold for that, but I suppose I could afford it, somehow --"

"You can't come in," she said thinly.

".. what?" Remes tried to step around her, but Dinya slid into his way. When he tried the other, she was there again, quick as if they were dancing. "You can't be serious," he protested, but she just lifted her chin.

"Come back tomorrow night."

"Did Ambarys ban me?" he asked. She shook her head, minutely. "Then why can't I go in?"

".. you just _can't_ , Mes."

"Well, be vague about it!" Remes glared at her, but she looked unabashed. Krem, at the very least, had the shame to look down at his shoes.

 

He and Susanna didn't need to eat at the cornerclub, not really. He could go back to his nice, clean home outside of the filth and dour light of the Quarter, settle by the hearth and and eat his own meal. There was bread in the cupboards and butter in a dish on the table.

He had money. If he wanted, he could stop by the market, even, get some meat. Susanna would be disappointed, but she'd take it in stride. She _knew_ how the dark elves were.

But the more that Dinya squared her jaw, the more - childishly, impossibly - that he wanted to head inside. He'd told Susanna to come to the club, and it'd be cruel to slam the door in her face now. So he tried a new tactic.

"What d'you think I wouldn't like?" he asked, coaxing. "Come on, Dinya. Spit it out. You know I like _everything._ Are my mother's parents in there?"

She glanced up at the sky, her lips thin, which was as clear an answer as she was apt to give.

"Good." That was a relief. Dealing with them was the only reason he might've accepted her refusal to let him enter, but Dinya had never understood his aversion to his mother's family, no more than he could understand her fear of the guards.

But his was _reasonable._ His mother's parents acted as if even acknowledging him was a gift he should thank them for, instead of a rotten sort of curse. After all, they'd never taken an interest in Haltafi.

"Has Ambarys finally given in and taken up a flag against Ulfric, then? Is he starting up a revolution in there?"

She curled her lip at him, flashing one sharp incisor. "Don't be daft," she said, offended. "And shut up. You'll get the guards in here."

"Please. You couldn't get the guards in here if someone died." He was drawing her out of her stubborn refusal, slowly but surely, and each clipped word felt like a victory. "Is Revyn taking his meal there again? Because you're the only one who doesn't like that."

Krem had looked up from his boots, drawn into the conversation like a moth to the flame at the mention of Revyn. So he'd met him already. Good.

"Revyn's her cousin," Remes explained all the same, in a murmur that quite deliberately could be heard. "Her very handsome, older cousin. Her very _friendly_ cousin, if you know what I mean."

"Shut up! Don't say it like _that!_ "

"So friendly. Alas. If he wasn't her cousin, I'd say she was jealous. But as is - ouch! Dinya!"

The punch to the arm was almost worth it for the thoughtful look on Krem's face. "He is attractive, isn't he?"

"You can shut up, too," she barked. Her cheeks had gone red with irritation. Or perhaps with just the chill: the wind was picking up, and the sharp, cramped alleys that made up the Quarter gave it a bite. "He's just generous. You don't have to go and make it filthy."

"Very generous," Remes murmured, and he ducked back just in time to avoid another punch. "Fine, fine. You won't let me in. Your cousin's probably got Idesa at his table, and you're afraid I'll go mad with jealousy. I _understand._ "

"But I'm bored." He drew his cloak tighter, breathing in. "And I'm cold," he said, with a dour look. "And it's an awfully long walk to my house. So if you want me to go away, you've got to do something for me first."

".. what?" she asked, suspicious.

"Get me a bird."

Dinya was already protesting. "That was only the once --"

"Did she ever tell you, she can snatch a seagull out of the air with her bare hands? One stole her sandwich and she just grabbed it," he explained to Krem.

Krem gasped, and Remes grinned at him. "Yes, that's exactly what I said. It was very impressive! And she climbs up the walls all the time."

"There's not even any birds in the Quarter," she objected. "And I'm not leaving, not at this time of day." She shifted uneasily. Dinya was wearing boots for once, which was a rarity: she preferred the thin wraps and furred slippers that'd let her grip through them.

There was a dilemma common to some of the light-eyed dark elves, where their vision blurred and their eyes wept in bright lights. It wasn't something that the other elves dealt with: he'd asked Neranye once if her blue eyes caused her similar problems, and she'd laughed in his face. For all of his dilute blood, his own vision was horrible: bad enough that Haltafi had once contemplated spectacles, before she'd considered the price involved.

The fact it was easier to see under the dim light of the moon, he supposed, was one of the reasons they were called dark elves.

But Dinya was sloe-eyed, with a colour deep enough that it looked black. "Your aversion to the sunlight is, as you like to say, _daft_ ," he informed her. "You can see just fine."

She grimaced at him. "I'm not going out at this time of day," she said again, slower, as if he were stupid.

"I know, I know: you might melt. But luckily, you won't need to. I spotted _this_ the other day." He turned, tilting his head up. The only good thing about the quarter was the shade. The hanging clothes blocked out the sun as effectively as any terrace, and even if everything was blurred, it was good enough.

He gestured up high, and as one, both Krem and Dinya turned to look.

"That's.. awfully high," Krem said doubtfully, but Dinya looked intrigued.

The nest was high up on one of the balcony's, nestled between the hook of the awning and the slant of the roof. There was just enough room for it to block the sun and wind alike, and the tangle of twigs and debris was only visible from below: the only reason, he suspected, the residents within the apartment hadn't already captured the parents for their cooking pot.

"There's no birds nearby." Watching Dinya try to hide her intrigue was almost painful: her face was wrinkled like she wanted to scowl, but her eyes were bright. He could practically see her calculating angles and finding footholds in her mind.

"It's nesting season. If you mess with it, I'm sure one'll appear." If it was still alive.

"And if I get you one of the birds, you'll go away? For the rest of the night?"

"I don't see why you want me to go," he said, "but yes."

"I think," Krem said, worried, "there's a better way to solve this. One that doesn't involve snatching _birds!_ "

"I'll be fine." Dinya was already stripping off her gloves and her boots, and passing them off to Remes. Her hands and feet were covered in thin wraps that were stained with brown streaks, but she wasn't moving as if she was injured. When she caught him looking, she raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Nothing," he said, for there was a warning in her tone.

Krem was still trying to convince her not to go up. His hands were hovering in front of her, and while he wasn't quite foolish enough to touch her, he looked as if he very well wished he could. "I think that your father might object to this," he tried at last, and Dinya frowned.

"I'm twenty, not four. I don't see what my father's got to do with it." She shook her head, sending her hair flying, and took a quick stretch. She bent low enough to touch her feet, and then bent back until her back cracked with the effort. "I'll be down in a moment, don't fret," she said, and then: "Mesmer! Remember, you promised."

Dinya's smile looked foreign on her face. And then she was scrambling up the wall.

Watching her move was always a pleasure. When Dinya held still, she looked like a half-grown horse, all legs and neck and uncertainty. She stood like she was taking up space that she didn't deserve, and at any given moment, she was trying to make herself look smaller, as if that alone could make her go unnoticed.

Even if she had been a Nord, she would never have been able to blend into a crowd, anymore than a stallion could blend into the geldings.

But when she moved, it was as if she forgot herself. There was a certainty to her that she lacked at any other time, and a joy that was typically kept masked under her discomfort. Climbing especially seemed to bring out the best in her. She was built for the task, and she seemed to feel it, for she was beaming as she began scaling the wall.

Krem had gone silent. Dinya climbed as easily as a squirrel, her toes curling into cracks and her fingers digging into the stone like she was creating her own grips. When she couldn't find a grip, she simply changed her angle. The first time she lilted sideways, clinging only with a single hand and foot, Krem tensed like he might shout.

"Isn't she amazing?" Remes said, nudging him. Dinya had found the hold she had been searching for, had yanked herself over in one swift movement, and was climbing once more. She was already more than halfway to the balcony, and she was paying them no mind at all.

"She's going to break her neck," Krem said faintly. His face had gone a ghastly shade of gray, but he was staring like he couldn't look away.

"No, no, don't worry about that. She's been doing this since she could walk. Revyn used to find her on his roof when she was a babe." He glanced down at her clothes, and then began re-arranging them safely under the club's overhang, away from any rain or snow. If her things had gotten dusty by the time she got down, that'd just give her another reason to be mad: Dinya's clothes were drab and bare as any serfs, but she liked to keep them neat all the same. "And she's not going to break her neck. Not with you watching. It'd be too embarrassing."

Krem's head jerked at that. He stared, wide-eyed. "You can't go in there," he said. "You told Dinya --"

"-- yes, I know what I told our dear." Remes looked up, squinting. She had just reached the balcony, and was pulling herself up. In a moment, she'd be at the nest. "But I told her I'd stay out if she brought me a bird. She doesn't have it yet, does she? So.."

"That's terrible! You promised."

"I know. She's going to think I'm awful," he said mournfully, "but I suppose I'll just have to deal with it."

Dinya had managed to onto the railings, and she was balanced there now, her arms out for support. She was also looking right down at him. He gave a quick, cheerful wave, and she gave a quick, brilliant grin before she turned to the nest.

"Apologise for me when she gets down, will you?" he asked, and then, before she could turn back, he darted inside the cornerclub.

 

\---

The door did not so much creak open as it slammed. He had to shove his shoulder into it to get it to open, and when it did, it was only with a great deal of protest, because the cornerclub was packed. Every elf in the Gray Quarter could've been in the small lobby, for all the room that he had to move in.

Remes had grown up hearing tales of the old life back in Morrowind, where regular meals were a right given to even the peasants, and a man could expect to break his bread several times a day. He somehow doubted that, but regardless of the truth, the fact of the matter was that the cornerclub was never empty: there were _always_ dark elves in there eating, even when, once, he'd come in at the dead of night.

But he'd never seen it this full.

There was sweat beading on his nape before he had taken three steps. He stripped his cloak as he walked, then the coat underneath, and he was shrugging off his gloves, holding them all awkwardly on an arm and doing his best not to jostle anyone as he moved. "Watch it," someone growled all the same, but when he looked back, he couldn't figure out who in the crowd had spoken.

All of the faces in the cornerclub were familiar to him. The dark elf community wasn't that big, for all that the hive-like nestle of buildings in the Quarter made it seem huge. But none of the ones in the crowd were the ones he was searching for: Revyn was not there, hidden away in his usual table, and neither was Vivyn.

And when he finally managed to push his way to the counter, where the crowd seemed thickest, it was not Malthyr there, going over the books like he usually was, but Ambarys instead, looking patient as Eldlil shouted at him.

He couldn't understand a word of it. Dunmeris was not a language he had been taught, nor one he had ever thought to learn: it was only the ease and speed with which they were speaking that clued him in. Thankfully, some of the other elves around him were equally lost.

"Mesmer! Good to see you, you godsdamn wretch," Dratha said, slipping in beside him. "Thought you'd gone and forgot about us, brother. You got the faintest idea what they're saying?"

Dratha was a third-generation, older than Remes by fifty years and no more aware of the language despite it. He shrugged, and Dratha grimaced, then turned to the elf behind her. "Thrarer?"

Her cousin had followed her up, and he slid in on Remes's other side, close enough that their shoulders were brushing. Thrarer was younger than Dratha, scarcely forty years old, but he was more adept in the language than either of them. He paused for a moment, his eyebrows furrowing, and then he began to rattle off a translation.

"Eldlil's saying that it's awful - no, no, sorry, that it's _bad enough_ that Ambarys's been using the young ones-" He made a disgruntled noise: "- that's _us_ \- to run his errands, but now he's gone too far. He's going to get the children arrested, and now he's -"

"- and -"

"And what?" Dratha said.

Thrarer's face was going pale.

"What? What did he say?" Remes demanded.

But Thrarer was turning and gesturing sharply for Dratha to follow. "Come on," he said, "we've got to go, Dratha, _right now_."

"What?"

"I'll explain outside. Come _on._ And Mesmer - you should go, too," he called over his shoulder, but he didn't stop walking. Whatever Eldlil had said had sent a reaction rippling all through out the crowd. Some of the dark elves were following Thrarer's lead, and leaving: others were simply milling, and all around him, everyone was talking.

Enough of it was Dunmeris that he couldn't catch more than snatches.

Dratha folded her arms, but she didn't move.

The argument was still going. Eldlil's face had gone dark purple, the colour spreading across his face like a bruise, and his lips were curled back in a snarl. But Ambarys still looked calm. When Eldlil finally finished the rattle of Dunmeris, pausing to take a breath, Ambarys was ready.

"Thirty or not, your son hardly counts as a child," Ambarys said, in perfect, pleasant Cyrddillac. "Not when he's already had two. I think he's fully capable of making his own decisions, hm?"

Eldlil's face darkened. With a strangled noise, he stepped forward, his arm drawing back. For a spell? To strike Ambarys? It was impossible to tell if the tension in the air was from the rage practically twisting the man's face, or from the build-up of magic.

Remes never got to find out which it was. Malthyr was between the two men in an instance, sliding between them like a barrier, and one of Eldlil's daughters was stepping forward, taking a hold of her father's shoulders to pull him back into the crowd. Malthyr and Ambarys were talking now, back in the hissing Dunmeris that did not carry.

Dratha kissed her lips to her teeth. "I think I get the gist," she said. "There's somewhere here they don't like. They don't want? Someone that shouldn't be here."

Remes's stomach dropped. "Oh," he sad, and it was amazing how casual his voice managed to sound. "Is that so? Like who?"

"I don't know." She rolled her shoulders back. "But we're going to find out," she said, and nudged him again. "You go talk to the young ones, and I'll hit up the old folks - someone's gotta blab, yeah?"

"He's not doing _anything,_ " Dinya snapped. "There was no damn bird up there, Mesmer, so here."

There was abruptly a nest dropped in his arm. When he looked down, it was full of feathers, but - sure enough - no bird.

"Ah. My mistake," he said faintly, and stepped back. The crowd had abruptly thinned around them. Dinya tended to do that: she was a head above everyone here, and right now, with her face knit with irritation, she was intimidating even despite her flat, childish face.

Behind him, Dratha had drawn in on herself, her eyes wide, her shoulders hunched. "I'm going to go talk to Eldlil," she squeaked, with a quick look towards Remes, and then she fled.

Remes managed two steps after her before Dinya cleared her throat. "No." She was scowling at him. "You wanted to see what was going on," she said flatly, "then fine. Come on."

She didn't grab him. She wasn't a brute, for all that she loomed, but the way she stood - her arms folded, her mouth drawn tight - said that leaving wasn't really an option.

He tried all the same. "What if," he said, "I'm taking your word for it now that this is _terrible_ , and I don't want to see it?"

"I'm sure you'll manage to survive it," she drawled. "Somehow. Come _on._ " She turned and stalked through the crowd, and reluctantly, he followed.

He was still holding the bird's nest. He wasn't entirely sure why, other than that dirtying up her father's tavern with debris by dropping it somewhere was only going to put Dinya in more of a snit, and he still had vague hopes that he might introduce her to Susanna tonight. (If Susanna wasn't the guest that had everyone in a furor.)

(No, no, that was silly. There'd been Nords in the cornerclub before, even unaccompanied. Even if she'd arrived before him, it'd have been fine, if a little awkward.)

The crowd had thinned out, but it wasn't entirely gone: while many had left with Thrarer, more had stayed. They were still clustered around the bar, where Ambarys sat, filling up glasses. Some of them were arguing with him in low, hissed voices, but he looked no more bothered than he had before.

Most of them were staring at the chair in the corner, where a stranger was sitting. It was the only place in the room where there were no bodies crowded, and something at the back of Remes's neck prickled, because - of course - that was where Dinya was leading him.

The stranger looked odd, off in a way that Remes couldn't place. Their back was swollen, as if they were hunching, and their legs, swathed though they were in loose, ragged trousers, looked too long. Their head was down, so that the hood covered their face in shadow. If they had even noticed the on-going drama around them, they showed no sign of it.

But they must've noticed.

"Hello," Dinya called, and Remes turned to look at her, for her voice was bright with a brittle sort of cheer. "Scout! There's someone who'd like to meet you."

The figure turned, and Remes's heart lurched, for the face that peered out from underneath the hood was no man's. The scaleskin's muzzle was short and broad, with two sharp points that rose at the end. Snaggled teeth jutted out from under its lip. The scales were a dull black, pitted with a sickly green.

From under the long lip of his hood, the scaleskin's eyes stared, pale enough that they seemed an unnatural white.

"This is Scouts-Many-Marshes," Dinya said, glaring at Remes, for he had taken a step back. "Say _hello,_ Mes."


End file.
